It’s a planet of apes!

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes may be up there in my list of most enjoyed films of 2024. Maybe not the best films, but the ones I personally enjoyed the most. Directed by Wes Ball of the Maze Runner series fame, and written by Josh Friedman who also wrote my favorite Terminator TV series of all time; The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Kingdom of the Planet brings us into a new era in the new era that is the reboot series.

It’s been seven years since the last Planet of the Apes film and in the movie itself time has passed even further. I’m talking 300 years. So much time has passed since the war for the planet of the apes that Caesar has become something of a Jesus figure in the ape community and revered as ape Jesus who gave his life for the betterment of his people. He’s also considered the first elder. In that time humanity has also continued to devolve to a caveman level, now unable to even speak with their past societies considered something of a myth among ape-folk.

The movie stars Noa (Owen Teague), a chimpanzee living in an ape clan whose existence revolves around raising falcons. Noa is about to enter his coming of age ceremony along with Soona (Lydia Peckham) the love interest and Anaya (Travis Jeffery) the comic relief. But everything changes when the fire nation attacks, as the clan comes under assault by a much larger and stronger clan led by an ape who calls himself Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand). In the intervening 300 years since Caesar’s death, a number of splinters of believers have created their own convoluted versions of his beliefs. Proximus Caesar takes Noa’s clan prisoner back to his encampment and Noa must go on a journey to rescue them.

Once again this movie has a great cast considering most of them are voice actors. The dialogue is easier to digest than the lower-level ape speak in prior movies. In the intervening 300 years the apes have learned to speak closer to humans. It’s also a testament to the quality of the CG that they make the completely computer generated characters feel so real and give them enough personality and facial expressions to make the audience care about them.

In addition to the already mentioned cast, Peter Macon plays Raka, who is the last member of an order who follow Caesar’s actual teachings. Sara Wiseman plays Dar, Noa’s mother, and Neil Sandilands with his deep voice plays Koro, Noa’s father. Freya Allan is in the movie as Nova, one of the last remaining humans and also one relatively more intelligent than the others. William Macy plays Trevathan, a human who decides to become a house human to Proximus Caesar and teaches him about history because the apes never learned how to read.

Noa and Nova’s paths intertwine and they share a common goal. Noa wants to rescue his family and clan from Caesar, who is desperately trying to get into a nearby military complex because he thinks it has what he needs to gain ultimate power. Nova on the other hand is trying to stop him because giving a bonobo keys to the nuclear codes is probably a really bad thing. She also needs to grab some stuff inside that the humans left there 300 years ago, but who knows what that could be. Kingdom of the Planet is the first in a new planned trilogy, and I have a feeling things are going to go wild in the next two movies.

There’s apparently another trilogy already planned after that, and given the length of time between films I will be in my 50s by the time it wraps up. Good god. I do have to question if the series can hold on for another five films. We are already in the era where they are repeating endings with yet another movie where the bad guys are holding a bunch of good guys hostage in a military complex and the good guys have to break in and rescue them. That being said the ending of the film does bring a lot of intrigue to a sequel.

At 2 and a half hours, Kingdom of the Planet is definitely a filling meal.

Rating: A-